


An Ass in the Hole

by wynnesome



Series: Go Bing-Or Go Home [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Character Study, Communication, Fix-It, Gen, Humor, Introspection, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon Fix-It, Puns & Word Play, Sassy Steve, Sassy Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Doesn't Stay Dead, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, america's ass, loveable assholes, what do you mean this isn't canon?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 16:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19445458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnesome/pseuds/wynnesome
Summary: When Tony entrusted Steve and Rhodey with the task of returning his body to his lab In The Event Of His Untimely, he figured either one of them was smart enough to suspect him of having a contingency plan. But he told them nothing of it, not wanting to get their hopes up in case the experimental process failed.It didn't; the Cradle, in conjunction with FRIDAY, succeeded in rebuilding Tony's body and restoring his memory from his night-before backup. And when he walked out of his workshop alive, none other than a grim-faced Steve Rogers was waiting for him.It turned out that saving the universe together had made them a little more willing to communicate than they used to be, and in the process, Steve turned some of Tony's choice words back on him to unexpectedly humorous effect.





	An Ass in the Hole

**Author's Note:**

> Fills the "Presumed Dead" square on my 2019 round 1 Stony Bingo card.
> 
> Unbetaed, but thank you muchly to [swtalmnd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swtalmnd) for help with tagging this fic, which is so very ambiguous about just about everything except two true facts: Tony Stark Does Not Stay Dead, and Steve Rogers Is Very Glad.
> 
> This fic started out as a punchline to which I did not know the opener, but I knew it was meant to be one of those couple-hundred word ficlets, basically a two-line exchange between Steve and Tony. 
> 
> Then my brain decided it wanted to give at least a modicum of explanation as to how Tony was still around to be having this two-line conversation. And considering I have several different, fairly detailed "there is no possible way in which Tony stays dead" headcanons, that turned into 1k or so of backstory before Steve was even written into the scene. 
> 
> The good thing (for me) about starting with a two-line concept is that when the fic explodes, it still only ends up somewhere in the 2-4k range - still nice and achievable, for a definition of "achievable" that equals "finishing the damn fic in a matter of days, rather than months or NEVER."
> 
> So, my two-line ficlet is now a 2k-something Endgame fix-it, which just happens to carry forward from the premise of my first Endgame fix-it, ["Re-entry,"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18716053) which also just so happens to be referenced in this fic. It's not essential to read that one first, but it's only 500 words, for anyone who wants to be able to catch the reference when it comes up.
> 
> As far as just how canon-divergent this is, well, I'm intentionally staying very ambiguous with regard to referencing Pepper and Morgan; there's clearly something going on here that's not entirely canon-compliant, but at this point, I'm leaving everything implied and not worrying about defining the exact nature of it.
> 
> I mean, Tony Does Not Stay Dead, but what do you mean, that's canon divergent???
> 
> Steve and Tony's relationship in this fic can be read as just about any flavor of your choosing, from friendship (with or without benefits), to pre-slash, to established relationship, to past-but-no-longer relationship. Your choice of main course comes with two sides: A Lot Of History and It's Complicated.

Once his... once he'd been in place, FRIDAY had known how to activate the Rock On protocol.

He'd entrusted only Rhodey and Steve with the imperative to return his... to return him to his lab -- not the garage workshop, but the larger facility across the property -- if.

(Thinking about dying, _having_ died, a second time now, for everything that really mattered, didn't bother him, but his mind still shied away from the idea and image of his uninhabited, de-animated form.)

He'd put it to them as a fierce insistence that he himself, with his own tech as proxy, retain sole custody of his bodily remains, and certainly, they both knew his need for control, for self-determination. Even past the limits of... any selfhood still existing. But they were also both sharp-witted men and tactical thinkers who knew him well enough -- and he, them, in turn -- to suspect them of suspecting him of a contingency plan in play.

When it came to Tony, Rhodey had long since planted his flag in the bedrock of "Don't Ask," a tenet strictly emancipated from any two other letters, and having zero bearing on "homo" or "hetero" except for the "genius." Discretion and insurance, rolled into one; his sugar snap knew what he was about.

Steve, though. Tony had half, more like three and a half quarters, expected Steve to press the point. To refuse anything less than full disclosure. He might even have given in. But he'd been relieved not to have to. It was better this way. This way, if it hadn't worked -- given it wasn't exactly something he'd been able to test beforehand -- they'd have had to let it go as an unfulfilled wish, rather than a failed reality.

For everyone else, he couldn't have stopped them from wishing, but they'd never have had an inkling it might have been more. He could live with knowing he'd left them to grieve for a day. He couldn't have died wondering if he'd be leaving them to grieve twice over for a lifetime.

**~~~~~~**

And so he woke, alone, nude but for the nano-container, coming to consciousness inside the narrow chamber with a gasp and a spasm of claustrophobia that had him drawing out the armor to flow around him. The enclosure opened with a hiss of smooth hydraulics; the sense of entrapment abated, but he remained in place. Taking stock. Remembering.

The Cradle had done its work: rebuilding his body and restoring his memory, reintegrating his night-before backup with a reconstruction of that last day's events, that latter created from the armor's ongoing 5-senses-surround data capture, fed to and through the algorithm of his mind-imprint.

Armored, he'd never seen with his eyes the damage to his right arm, but he'd experienced it, the screaming agony of flesh consumed by sheer power -- _char-flay-wither_ \-- _no, don't, don't imagine the incinerated husk of his limb, don't relive it, slide away..._

Even the arm was whole and intact, within a gauntlet that was now, thankfully, devoid of all fucking cosmic rainbow rocks.

They'd won. And the victory had killed him. And he was alive.

Everything had worked exactly the way it was supposed to, except for everything in the middle -- betrayal and sacrifice and so goddamned much brutal, senseless death -- that should never have had to be at all.

And here he was, selfish bastard. Remade, renewed, rejuvenated. Better than he'd been in a long time, if his little tweaks to the program had been fully implemented, and no reason at this point to think they hadn't.

On the cosmic scale, he'd saved the whole damned universe. But still, so many lost, so many he hadn't been able to save. The small pictures, the snapshots, the microcosms that mattered in people's lives. And he'd cheated death for exactly one of them. Himself. Did it balance out? He wasn't so sure it did.

He... couldn't think any more about that right now. Anything else in his power to fix, to bring back, to make restitution -- that would come. But... a little later. A little more of the selfish. He needed a few... minutes, hours, days, some unit of time moving in only one direction, to... not think about the entirety of it, first.

Speaking of firsts. First things. Up and at 'em. Goings to places and seeings of people.

At a gesture, the armor retracted; he glanced reflexively at his unmarred right arm, but only that. Didn't flex it, shake it out, didn't fist and open five functioning fingers. Sure as hell didn't snap them. He sat up, stepped out, stood on his feet. He felt like he should be hyperaware of his body, his mobility. But he wasn't. Didn't find himself running his hands down the familiar, sturdy lines of his figure from tip to toe, or feeling over the shape of his face.

As he slipped into a spare set of soft underclothes and sweats, he didn't even have the urge to rub his eyes or stretch and yawn.

That was maybe the oddest part. That sense that there should be some... remnant. Residue. Some need to recover. From the strenuous battle, the terror, the massive adrenaline rush and dump. From being fucking _dead_. Like there should be some kind of byproduct, residual buildup, in his muscles and organs, the way there plainly was in his mind. But there wasn't. Physically, he felt... normal. Like himself. Like he'd never stopped. Halted. Ended. Ceased to be. Like he was just... continuing on into another day -- waking alert and settled in his skin after a night's sound sleep, marred only by a disturbing, vivid, but slightly glass-refracted, distanced dream.

(There'd been another, something gentle, promising and peaceful, but it was already so much vapor wisping away; truly a dream, that one must have been, not a part of his reconstituted memory.)

A sweetly lilting voice dispersed the last traces.

"Welcome home, boss. If I may, I never thought welcoming you back to the land of the living would be so literal."

"I..." There it was, the gravelly refuse, the rust in his throat. He cleared it. "Thanks baby girl. You're a wonder. Feels like I never even left."

She replied with a self-satisfied hum and left it at that, and that was so very FRI, and she was perfect, and he'd never, not ever, get over missing JARVIS's brand of backchat.

He looked around. The bots were dormant in their charging stations; the 'shop was a little bare, the way he'd left it, with everything tidied away at a stopping point before their feature presentation starring in the remake of _Time Bandits_. It was quiet, the perpetually metal-tanged air a little less dense without its customary overpopulation of sound waves battering the walls. He'd get back down here and get some tunes cranking, later.

He had other music to face, first.

"Lift the blackout, and open up, if you would, please, FRI."

"You got it boss, but I should probably warn you, you have a--"

She could be perfect and still need to work on her timing. She'd completed his request before completing her sentence, and the door opened to reveal, standing vigil in the corridor just beyond, a grim-faced Steve Rogers.

**~~~~~~**

Ok, yeah, so Steve had known.

Well, being offensive was the best defense, or however it went.

"You draw the short straw, Rogers?"

Tony clenched his jaw and crossed his arms -- _two unscarred, unmutilated arms_ \-- to mirror Steve's position.

But Steve was already unfolding his, lowering his knee from where it'd been bent up with his boot heel braced back on the wall, and striding toward Tony, his dark look unfolding into something wide-eyed and undecipherable as he did.

 _He'd known, but he hadn't BELIEVED_ , Tony had time to think, before Steve was folding his arms once again, but this time with Tony inside, and there'd never be a feeling to compare with this, being enveloped against Steve Rogers' impossibly broad chest, warmed to the bone by the barely banked furnace of his serum-stoked body, and leaning into the unshakable thud of his heart.

"Only short straw was thinking we'd lost you for good, _Stark_." Steve's breath gusted hot through Tony's hair and over his ear, his growl rumbling against Tony's temple till its half-life expired and it decayed, broken down into choked-out iterations of his first name. "Tony, Tony..."

Goddammit, he'd been the one dead, and he still had to do the comforting? He worked one arm awkwardly out from the circle of Steve's and wrapped it around his back, light patting turning to steady circling, and circling turning to an equally desperate grip into the thin cotton of Steve's t-shirt.

"'m not so easy to get rid of, you should know by now," he muttered, trusting Steve to be able to make out the words, however muffled into his shoulder. He breathed him in, skin-warmed fabric and earthy skin itself, with a thread of sharpness that spoke of hours waiting in uncertainty.

By seemingly mutual, but reluctant agreement, they disengaged after a few more breaths, putting enough distance between them for damp eyes to meet, but not enough to split their Venn diagram into two separate personal circles.

Tension coiled in Tony's stomach again; just because Steve was glad he was alive didn't mean there wasn't still a size ten tactical boot poised on a ledge high overhead.

He made himself leave his arms by his sides, holding himself motionless as for a full body scan, even as he scrutinized Steve. Observed as Steve shifted his weight, his eyes flicking from Tony's face downward and back up, once, and again.

Steve's mouth opened and closed on a false start, and then he visibly gathered his resolve, lifting his chin and reaching down to catch Tony's hands -- _both unmauled, unmaimed hands_ \-- in his fingers. He squeezed lightly and stroked his thumbs over Tony's knuckles, a pleasing catch of calluses over work-toughened skin.

Tony's stomach unclenched; ok, probably no other shoe gonna drop. then.

"Look, whatever you did in there," Steve was saying, "you don't have to explain -- I wouldn't understand the half of it, and maybe it's better if I don't know, anyway--"

...as if he were envisioning an abattoir, arcana and entrails, a necromantic nightmare in place of clean code and immaculate surgical sterility.

"--but I'm just glad it worked." Steve finished with a nod, on a firm note, in that way he had at his best, of simplifying a matter without reducing it.

After the fact as it was, Tony couldn't help but rush in to reassure them both.

"The science was sound, every simulation came back 100%, all the scans and backups verified within some... very intolerant tolerances..." He let his mouth run itself out and sighed. "Yeah. I'm glad it worked, too."

"You mean you weren't sure?" Steve's eyes flashed fear, and his grip tightened for a moment.

"I was..." Tony shrugged, shoulders rising as their hands remained linked low between them. It had been a chance to take, either way, with one risk acceptable and the other... not. FRIDAY had had the diagnostics to run if he... if anything had come back recognizably wrong -- and she'd had the kill switch, too, but not a soul, including either of his two accomplices, ever needed to know about that part.

"I was pretty sure, but it's not the kind of thing where you get a trial run, you know?"

"That's ok, Tony, your 'pretty sure' is anyone else's Q.E.D."

"Mmm, speak acronyms to me, baby..." He cracked a grin. "So you're saying you weren't standing outside the 'shop to make sure what came out wasn't... I dunno. Ultrony?"

Once upon a time, in a compound far, far away, it would have been forever too soon for that joke, and this might arguably have been a space opera, but it was no fucking fairy tale, neither Disney-esque nor any of the much darker traditions, and though this wasn't an ending, there just might be some happy to be found, and... ah, yes, it had done the trick to lighten the mood.

Steve rolled his eyes and huffed in mock exasperation. "No, I wasn't expecting an evil Tony-bot. I..."

Tony took mercy, returning the hand squeeze. "It's ok, Steve. I'm glad to be back, too." His lips still held a small smile, but he let it fall out of his eyes as they held Steve's. He should probably just... get this out now, while they had this moment, so there didn't have to be any more awkward feelings-talkings later.

He twitched his head back toward the workshop entry behind him. "If that door had never opened, though... you'd have been ok. You all would." He was glad they didn't have to be, on his behalf, but certain of it. His chosen family had a fortitude no force in the universe could defeat.

Steve's hands slackened and his eyes opaqued, sliding off into the distance and taking on that lost, haunted look. "We'd have gone on," he began, pensively. "It's what we do. But it wouldn't'a..." He stalled out and started again. "I mighta done something..." A third attempt, and it caught, this time, like a sputtering motor. "To be honest, I'm not sure how I would have managed it. Nothing would have been the same."

Everything Steve wasn't out-and-out saying was terrifying, and intolerable. "Steve--"

Steve shook his head, shook it off, returning from wherever he'd been. Back to himself, back to Tony.

"Nah, it's ok, no sense living in the might-have-beens, right? You're still here... back... whatever you want to call it, and that's what matters."

Tony's brows raised in question.

Steve's mouth curved and his eyes crinkled. Like one of those physics-defying flip-twisty countermoves in their long-ago training sessions, Tony didn't know exactly what was coming, but he started a mental checklist till it hit.

Hook: _check_. Line: _check_.

Steve released one hand to jerk a thumb over his shoulder. "Because, you know, America's Ass?" He pointed at Tony. "It ain't good for shit without its asshole."

Tony blinked.

Sinker: _check_.

He refused the bright pull blooming in his cheeks -- his facial ones -- in favor of a deadpan, gruff rejoinder.

"Way to a man's heart, there, Steve, buddy, straight through his sphincter."

"Hey, I call it like I see it."

"Yeah, that should at least be Iron Asshole to you, ASCAP." Tony finally relented on the smile, let it shine through, and Steve looked light on his feet again, light in his heart, the way Tony loved to see him. This was it right here, heavy on the happy, and none of the ending.

He tugged his remaining hand free and slung his arm around Steve's apple pie-crust crimp of a waist, giving America's Ass a playful slap to start them moving down the corridor toward the main exit.

"Ok, whaddayou say we head over and give the good news to the ladies of the house?"


End file.
